


Boulder City Bar Fight

by AcceleratedStall



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Bar Fight, Blood, Gen, Knife fighting, Level 50 Courier, NCR-Aligned Courier, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 12:31:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15729450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AcceleratedStall/pseuds/AcceleratedStall
Summary: One slow night at the Big Horn Saloon, Ike the bartender learns just how it is that reputations are made. It ain't pretty.





	Boulder City Bar Fight

It was a slow night at the Big Horn Saloon. Some (presumably well-armed) lunatic had cleared the Deathclaws out of Quarry Junction, so the concrete plant could get back to work, but the news hadn’t travelled fast, and only a few of the plant workers had returned to Boulder City so far. They filtered in and out of the bar, but Ike supposed that none of them had earned enough money yet to stay and make a night of it.

A couple NCR troopers had poked their heads in earlier and looked like they might have been looking to get pretty wasted, but before they could buy their first drinks, their sergeant burst in and dragged them both out of the saloon by the collars, yelling all the while. Pity, Ike thought, but the Hoover Dam garrison are all tense as drum skins right now, and it was beginning to spread to the rest of the NCR army too. That left the four gentlemen at the corner booth as the only unusual visitors to the Big Horn tonight.

They're dressed much nicer than the concrete workers, with coats and clean button-down shirts. Strip gamblers don’t usually come through Boulder City - Ike’s best guess is that they work for one of the big caravans. They order four beers, then talk quietly among themselves, out of Ike’s earshot from his place behind the bar, and resisting all of his efforts at conversation. That’s okay by him, not everyone is a talker, but he can’t help being a little curious.

Then a vaguely familiar face comes through the door. Ike has seen this man before, he knows it, but it takes an awkward moment of mental searching to remember when and how.

Ah, right! The Khan standoff! He was the guy who talked everyone out of shooting each other, somehow. Which means that he's also…

Courier Six, savior of the Mojave, was the talk of the town from here to Shady Sands. He had a real name, of course, but it was largely either unknown or disregarded; instead, back within the NCR proper the newspapers lavished him with every glowing epithet short of “Messiah.” He had done more for the NCR’s position in the Mojave in weeks than Oliver and Hanlon had done in years; catching spies, hunting down the Fiends, delivering supplies, and gathering intelligence. He’d led a squad into Nelson and taken the town from a Legion force twice its size. Rumors put him everywhere, from Cottonwood Cove, where a mysterious radiological event had killed every living man, to Bitter Springs, where two civilians put up a miracle defense against a pack of Legion slavers. More surprising was that the rest of the Mojave seemed to like Courier Six too, even many of the NCR’s foes. He’d spoken to the King in person, and was known to be on good terms with Julie Farkas - he’d even travelled with a Followers doctor for a while. He’d been into the Lucky 38, and foiled some sort of terrorist plot to blow up the Strip. The Khans supposedly owed him several favors. He even left Boomer territory with all of his fingers and toes intact. Tall tales grew with each new report of the Courier’s talents - he was immune to Cazador venom, he could heft a young Bighorner with one arm, he spoke better Latin than Caesar himself, he could kill a fire gecko by spitting on it.

And now here he stands in front of Ike’s bar. To tell the truth, Courier Six doesn’t look much like a Wasteland legend in the making - just a guy, though maybe a little more weathered than some. Beneath an old cowboy hat and a long black duster he wears tattered denim jeans and a light armor vest; his skin shows years of exposure to the sun. A Pip-Boy on his wrist - not many folks have one of those. He probably doesn’t have to pay for many drinks these days, but he lays down sixteen caps for a glass of whiskey on Ike’s bar anyhow, and takes a seat at a round wooden table nearby, facing towards the saloon door. There is some kind of design painted on the back of his jacket - something with stars - but the back of his chair makes it difficult to make out the rest.

Ike asks the Courier what he’s doing at the Big Horn. He tersely replies that he is waiting for an old friend of his, but offers nothing more. Well, whatever the reason, maybe Ike could drum up some more business later by advertising that Courier Six had stopped for a drink here.

He makes the glass of whiskey last, Ike notices. Small sips, interspersed with long periods of complete silence. The night wears on, familiar faces from the concrete mixer come and go, and still, the Courier just watches. One of the workers recognizes him, and asks to shake his hand; the Courier complies, but his eyes never settle on his admirer, moving about the room the whole time.

The clock rolls past one. Ike has taken inventory of the shelf full of bottles on the back wall, scrubbed down the bar, and finished washing up his glassware; he can find little else to do but stare up at the ceiling fan and watch it turn. The Big Horn Saloon is almost empty, but for the Courier and, oddly, those four out-of-towner gentlemen Ike had noticed in the corner earlier. A man could get a lot of thinking done in this kind of night quiet, Ike muses idly.

The squeak of Courier Six pushing back his chair isn’t loud, but in the strange barren atmosphere that prevails in the bar, it’s jarring; Ike turns to him with a start. The Courier rises to his feet and takes a few slow steps towards the corner booth where the other four men sit; even footsteps feel loud.

“You four,” the Courier says, “have not had a single sip from your beers since I got here.” The men turn to look at him.

The Courier continues, the tone of his voice growing more serious and authoritative. “Why don’t you tell us why you’re really here?”

Ike feels his heart start to beat a little faster as one of the men rises from his seat and speaks. “You have flouted Caesar’s mercy, and he marks you for death. The Legion cannot permit you to live!” At this he draws a weapon - like a machete, but shaped and curved. He's not joking, it _is_ a Legion blade he's holding - a breathless NCR trooper had showed Ike one he’d taken as a war prize once. A gladius, it's called. Fear rises in Ike’s throat, but - is he imagining it? - he swears he hears the Legion man’s voice waver as he delivers his threat.

Courier Six answers with a dark chuckle, and somehow the sound freezes Ike’s blood in a way that even seeing someone draw a sword in his bar didn’t. “You _don’t_ want to do that,” the Courier warns.

The standing Legionary yells and leaps towards Courier Six. His three compatriots seem to be reaching for things under their table - had some weapons been hidden here for them earlier? They hadn’t looked to be packing when they walked in.

Time seems to slow as the Courier sidesteps the gladius strike. The Legionary recovers to make another stab, but with a single, fluid motion, the Courier takes a chair in one hand, and swings it in an upward arc into the other man’s face. As the assassin reels from the blow, the Courier kicks him in the solar plexus; he stumbles to the floor and lies still on his back. Courier Six is apparently willing to consider him taken care of for the time being, primarily because two of the other Legionaries now have guns in their hands.

Ike dives behind the readily available cover of his bar as what sounds like a shotgun booms through the saloon. Splinters of wood and bits of plaster fly through the air and suddenly all Ike can hear is the ringing of his own ears. He raises his head over the top of the bar, as little as he can manage, and cracks one eye back open, looking over the battlefield that his tavern has become with a strange detachment. Maybe it was just easier than panicking. A number of things become evident at once.

First off, the Courier isn’t dead, far from it. Apparently between kicking Legion Assassin #1 in the chest and Legion Assassin #2 firing a sawn-off shotgun, he’d found the time to flip one of the heavy wooden tables in the middle of the room on its side, and crouch on one knee behind it. Ike figures his tables would have cost a lot more than they did if they were bulletproof, but Courier Six appears untouched. He swings a pump-action shotgun in his left hand - _where had he even been keeping that?_ \- as Legionary #2 loads two more shells into his sawn-off from the partial cover of one of the diner booths, and Legionary #3 cocks and aims some sort of compact submachine gun. The fourth man has pulled out a second gladius, but does not yet close the distance to his foe, perhaps waiting for the Courier to pick a target. If so he doesn’t have long to wait. Before even steadying his gun, the Courier fires a salvo at the Legionary with the submachine gun.

For a shot fired from the hip one-handed, it’s pretty accurate. Ike sees blood spreading around the breast pocket of the Legionary’s shirt, but before he can determine whether the blow is fatal, the Courier has racked his shotgun and fired his next round - aimed with both hands this time. The Legion man dies with his finger on the trigger, and a hot spray of bullets strikes the ceiling and wall above where Ike crouches. The deafening burst of gunshots hides the sound of breaking glass, but Ike can feel splashes of alcohol land on his back from shattered bottles on the shelves behind him.

As his comrade falls, the Legionary with the sawn-off shotgun snaps its barrels back into place to fire again, but he’s already out of time. Another flash from the Courier’s gun fills the room. Ike had never actually seen someone blow someone else’s head off before. Far from just being a figure of speech, there it is in front of him. A human face had been there less than an instant ago, and now… just little pieces. He’d blanch, but it’s far too late to stop watching now.

Courier Six has somehow reduced four adversaries to one in less time than it took for Ike to pour them their drinks hours and momentous seconds ago, but If the last Legionary is cowed, he does a good job hiding it. He lunges towards the Courier with his blade, shouting something like “Retribution!” that Ike can barely make out in his tinnitus haze. Courier Six fires one more shot, but it goes wide; Ike can see it graze through the Legionary’s coat and shirt. There’s no room to fire again, maybe not even enough to pump the slide again. For a moment, the Courier is wide open.

If even Ike can see the opening, cowering as he is behind the bar, the Legionary definitely can. His strike is practiced brutality; all speed and force and economy of movement, a stab tracing the shortest distance between two points.

Yet it still isn’t enough. The Courier flings his shotgun away with a sweep of his right hand, and with his left deftly turns away the gladius with a blade of his own. The Legionary takes a half-step back (in surprise?) and the Courier pushes a half-step forward to meet him.

Ike had seen a knife fight once before. It had been two drunks, more interested in making a point than in really hurting each other; they’d moved their blades in big, theatrical swings as they yelled and jeered at one another, until some big angry tough had gotten bored of watching them and broken them up. This is something altogether different. There are no flourishes or catcalls, just wordless malice, as the Legionary’s gladius and the Courier’s bowie knife clash, pull back, and jab once more. Each motion is almost too quick to follow from the outside - it’s surprising to Ike that either man even has time to blink.

For the first few seconds the two combatants appear evenly matched, but it doesn’t last. A flurry of blows from the Courier’s knife push the Legionary back first one step, then two - then he catches one foot on the leg of a chair. He recovers in an instant, but it’s all the opening that Courier Six needs. He makes a thrust towards the Legionary’s arm; Ike can’t tell where it connects, but it must, because the Legionary’s weapon falls out of his hand to the floor with a metallic ringing. The Courier turns the bowie knife over in his hand, then pushes it upward into the Legionary’s chest from just below the ribcage. It’s over. His adversary crumples to the floor as the Courier withdraws the knife, his hand covered in blood. His face is hard to read, but his eyes are still moving around the room, just like they’d been earlier while he was shaking a man’s hand. With one unbloodied hand he nonchalantly brushes his jacket to dislodge some of the debris thrown up by the gunfire moments earlier.

It’s not exactly an all-clear sign, but Ike begins to rise from his crouch behind the bar and resume something more like a standing position. He can feel himself start to breathe again, when something makes a sound from the floor, somewhere between a sigh and a grunt. Ike scans the room - aren’t they all dead now? One Legionary is pushing himself up on his elbows, his face bruised and nose bleeding. He pulls a revolver from his coat, points it - and then there’s a knife handle sticking out of his neck. He makes an awful, indescribable sound from his throat and then falls still. Courier Six stands empty-handed - Ike had barely even seen him _move_ , much less throw anything.

The Courier slings his previously discarded shotgun over his back and reaches down to pull the knife out of the Legion assassin’s neck, kicking the unfired gun in the dead man’s hand aside with his boot. It clatters across the floor, and as it settles to a stop quiet returns to the Big Horn Saloon. Not the same quiet, though. Plaster dust hangs in the air, and the floor is covered in splinters of wood and broken glass. Blood pools into expanding puddles. By some strange chance, the four beer glasses at the assassins’ booth are all untouched - and full, just like the Courier said they were. A single incongruous bullet hole punctures one blade of the ceiling fan, still slowly turning. The air tastes like whiskey and murder.

Ike steps out gingerly from behind the bar. Courier Six turns to face him, seemingly sizing him up. He speaks for the first time since he accosted the Legionaries. “Not hurt, are you?”

“I, uh… I think I’m fine,” Ike replies, looking over the Courier in turn. There’s a gash across his cheek and lip, and it looks like he got grazed on his upper right arm, maybe twice; there don’t appear to be any other visible injuries.

“Good,” Courier Six answers. “I’m going to see if I can get a hold of the 188 or Hoover on the radio. Get someone over here to clean up the mess.”

Ike’s barely listening though, because in the time it takes the Courier to finish that thought, the cut on his face all but heals itself, closing up to the faintest of white lines where the bleeding had been. The Courier makes for the door, oblivious to the questions that Ike knows must be written all over his face.

The Courier’s stride hitches, and he grabs something out of a pocket before reaching for the door handle.

“Almost forgot. You take this, for the damages.”

He leaves a burlap pouch on one of the tables; it tinkles like caps. Then he’s out the door.

Ike crosses the saloon to retrieve the bag, attempting to make a mental catalog of how many windows and how much furniture he’ll have to replace. It’ll take months to get everything fixed, but most of his customers aren’t too fastidious about a few bullet holes on the walls. There’s more than a few, actually, and they’re odd shapes, not always perfect round marks like they are in the gangster movies. There’s an especially large crater to the left of the saloon door, just below the shattered window - is that something stuck in it? Temporarily more curious about this than about how many caps the Courier gave him, Ike crouches down and takes a closer look.

He pulls loose a gold Legion coin - bent out of shape more than a little, but Caesar’s face is still recognizable. Another coin is on the floor a few inches away. A few more flecks of gold catch his eye along the wall. _Crazy bastard shot them to death with their own damn money_ , Ike realizes.

It also occurs to him that he needn’t just advertise that the Courier had a drink here, anymore. _Come to the Big Horn Saloon! The Courier killed four people here!_ A little too morbid a slogan, for him even if not for the billboards along the road.

Even so. Ike’s never thought himself to be much of a praying man, but if this is the Mojave’s idea of a savior, he’d hate to see its Devil.

**Author's Note:**

> Compared to just about any NPC in the game, the Courier is incredibly accomplished. By the end of the game, particularly if you hit the level cap, you'll be an expert in fields ranging from science to economics, an ace in several forms of combat, and responsible for dozens of dangerous and unlikely feats. Not to mention, you'll have killed scores of people. I figure someone like that has to be pretty intimidating to most anyone else around them, which is what inspired this piece.
> 
> It's also my first real effort at writing explicit violence or an action scene, and you might be able to tell that I'm not quite comfortable. Still, it was worth a shot. Let me know what you think.


End file.
